


of learning

by stellatiate



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-21
Packaged: 2018-07-25 21:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 13,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7547860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellatiate/pseuds/stellatiate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5672">We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them</a>." Let us render this hatred invalid.</p><p> </p><p>-—katara & zuko. s3, the western air temple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. —of learning the boundaries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> i want to move some of my fics from fanfiction.net and just live on ao3, so this is the longest one that i have to transfer. rip.

**try to make it better instead of trying to destroy it**  
of learning the boundaries  
…

Aang thinks this is beneficial.

Katara thinks that Aang would sculpt with the Avatar State, he would breathe air into the bones of his deceased people, coat them with earth and push water through their veins and light their eyes with fire and pluck their spirits from the Spirit World—and think it erasure for all the Fire Nation has done.

But she floats down into the lotus position, tossing her thicket of curls over her shoulder and glaring into the face of her enemy, whose widened eyes and primly shut lips lend an aura of shock and nervousness to the air.

Aang sits down perpendicular to the two of them. He presses his fingertips into the dirt in front of him and draws his hands closer together; the ground shifts and both Zuko and Katara yelp as their knees collide.

"This is a terrible idea," she bites out, her nails digging into the red fabric at her knees.

"I—" Zuko's protests die on his lips as Katara levels another potent glare at him, and he looks down, fringes of his hair shading his eyes.

"Mediating is important," Aang says in a bright voice, resting his hands on their knees with a childish smile, a smile that speaks to how he thinks the world should work, and Katara thinks that perhaps a failure on a small scale like this will wake him up to reality. "Maybe if you two learn more about one another—"

"What is there to _learn_ about him that we don't already know?" She huffs, hair fluttering from in front of her face, and Zuko's head snaps up, those glittering bright eyes narrowed at her.

"You know _nothing_ —"

"I know what's _important—_!"

"Not to me!"

"—and it's that you can't be trusted," she ends on a harsh stab of a whisper, but their eyes are still locked with one another in a deadly gaze. Aang coughs and then it is Zuko who looks away, shame filling the bright red of his cheeks.

"This is _exactly_ what I mean," Aang says with a tone exasperated with lifetimes of conflict built behind it. "We used to do this in the Air Temples when there were disagreements. All you have to do is sit in this position and share one thing—one _important_ thing—about yourself. I believe that if you learn about the things that are important to other people, you'll be able to understand them more, and, _heh_ , you two really need to understand each other."

He scratches the back of his head and smiles at them, but it is Katara whom he softens. Zuko's eyes still rest in his lap, his cheeks stained red. "Okay, Aang," Katara relents in a soft, understanding voice, and it's so startling that she barely recognizes it herself; the roundness of Zuko's eyes shows he doesn't recognize it either.

His lips uncurl over his teeth in a smile that frightens her because she's never been that happy, never been pleased by little things such as reconciliation and friendship and possibilities. "Five minutes!" He adds in a bright voice, and then he is a tornado spinning away from the two of them.


	2. —of learning enemy tactics

**i've been down this memorial road before**  
of learning enemy tactics  
…

Katara doesn't realize that five minutes have passed until a cool breeze tickles the back of her neck, Aang's voice filtering through her head slowly. "You guys are _still_ sitting here?"

She cranes her head to the side to look at him, her hands pressed onto her thighs, and sends him an uneasy smile (there's something about the softness in his voice that keeps her calm, but she's not quite sure what that is, exactly).

It does catch her offguard, however, when Zuko speaks up behind her.

"I don't know what to say," his voice is heavy, heavier than even its trademark rasp, the way he always seems to inflect the weight of the world with his words. Aang's eyes widen from curiosity to shock before he moves over to sit beside the firebender, floating past her. Zuko seems to squirm in Aang's presence, as if it's impossible for the two of them to inhabit such close quarters, what with them being so different.

"Something important," Aang's eyes crinkle in the corners and Katara has to smother the smile from her own lips, because it is _not_ an appropriate time for it, "Share something that means a lot to you."

A thousand thoughts seem to crawl across Katara's mind, thoughts of relics long lost in the snow, of the way she used to hop in her father's footprints (and how huge the world had seemed then, standing in boots that were ten times the size of her own), things that weren't really _things_ at all.

"That sounds great," Aang says to Zuko, his hand fastened on the older boy's shoulder, and Katara realizes she's zoned out for the entirety of their conversation. "This time, when I come back," he stands and Katara tilts her head up to look at him as he moves by, dropping his hand to rest in the froth of curls tangled on her shoulder, "I hope you've at least spoken to each other, okay!"

Katara's eyes flit over Zuko for only a few moments, long enough to watch him fold his hands into his lap and stare down at them, before she watches Aang retreat in colors of sunset, his gait feather light.

There's nothing to say, because she has nothing to say. She takes strands of her hair into her hands, threads them loosely while she thinks of all the things she could do with the time she's wasting here, sitting in front of this exiled Prince. They're so close that she can feel the heat wafting from his body (because neither of them have moved from where Aang pushed the earth together, a tiny rift in the ground between them from where the rocks collided), so close that she doesn't have to reach too far before her fingers are hovering close to the furled scarred flesh over his face.

This is so, completely and utterly—

"I burned myself."

When she looks up, his hand is cupped like there is a candle in its center and she expects flame to burst, but it doesn't; instead, he touches the tips of his fingers together, rubbing his own fingertips. "When I first learned I could firebend, I burned myself. My father said it was because my chi was weak."

She creases a frown deep across her lips, because Zuko says _father_ in such an oppressive way that it hurts even her, but she doesn't speak. And even when he falls silent, she distracts herself by watching the thin pale fingers trace over wounds that have healed long ago. "I was always ready to use my firebending to hurt other people instead. And I only ever—" _I only ever hurt myself_. "When I took up swords, I was taught restraint. And deliberation. And being aware that I had the choice whether or not to strike with harmful intent."

When he shifts, he shifts the both of them; Katara scoots back slightly, frowning. "That might not be important to you, but it is to me." He shrugs his shoulders and without much of a warning, he stands to brush the wrinkles out of his pants.

"Wait," she grinds her teeth in annoyance, "it's supposed to be my turn, isn't it?!" But Zuko doesn't turn around, and after Katara scrambles to her feet, she doesn't have the drive to chase him down.

…

But she watches his eyes when she sits on the other side of the fire, how there's a fire that simply sways and dances and slips through the air, and how it doesn't matter what surrounds it, that it will burn carelessly (carefree) in ways he would never.

She doesn't really know what to do with this new information (and she hopes Aang doesn't ask).


	3. —of learning to share perspective

**let me throw my head back and laugh**  
of learning to share perspective  
…

Zuko can never enjoy the air that pulls through his clothes as he slips between levels of the air temple. Sometimes, it can be so strong and so suffocating that he anticipates a fistful of air to grip the back of his tunic and toss him into the crevasse below (and even though he suspects it is where he belongs, something about the wind being stolen from his lungs until the shattering of his spine against the earth doesn't seem fitting to him, lying there as all the air rushes back for a final, hauntingly desperate inhale).

He always seems to aimlessly wander towards the spot for their mediation, as if it pulls at him, the earth peeling back and pressing together, a tiny ridged mountain that he and Katara always straddle. Zuko pictures curls of fire on one side, running along the small slope, never to intertwine with the foamy waves that crest on the opposite side. He tries to count the hours that have passed since he last spoke, mere slivers of an entire day slipping away as he thinks.

It was foolish to expect her to be stretched under the pressure of the gravity in his words, because she could have never understood those feelings. He'd wrestled so long with his right to make choices, wrestled with the fire that burned in his veins and begged to destroy.

No, Katara would have never understood what it was like to push poison through his own body for years, to fuel it with hatred and bitterness, to constantly have to struggle between hurting others or hurting himself, because fire only ever hurt, only ever reduced beauty to ash. (He'd long since taught himself not to remember how fire melts the flesh from bone immediately, taught himself to desensitize it all.) The decision to withhold didn't exist with fire, not the way it did when he handled steel.

"How long have you been sitting here?"

She is a formidable woman, because he knows the warrior's heart that tears at her insides, even though the sight of her with her hair wound in a dripping, spiral bun and her lips poked into a pout leaves him to wonder how she retains her softness. She is formidable, and she is a woman, and Zuko knows better than to let either of those facts disarm him from the validity of the other. (To say, that her softness does not discredit her ferocity, and that her ferocity does not overshadow her softness.)

"A few minutes," Zuko replies, but she sits so suddenly that it hardly matters, and something floral and earth scented drifts across the small space. When she scoots forward, their knees touch in a splash of chill, freshness that drags his thoughts into the fact that she was bathing.

"Last time, I, uh," she fumbles, and he huffs quietly.

"I didn't mean to just walk away like that," he frowns, and she raises an eyebrow in frustration.

"Yeah, well, don't do it again, okay?" Katara folds her arms across her chest, and he swallows; a perfect mixture of her wrath and her femininity, all in one gesture. "I didn't know how to explain to Aang that I didn't speak."

Her cheeks scatter with blush but he doesn't say anything about it. "I'll follow the rules, promise."

Katara seems wholly unimpressed, but she purses her lips in thought and that is enough to sate him for now. For a few minutes, the only thing to listen to is the sound of their breaths mingled together, like living currents of wind back and forth. He coughs into the crook of his elbow for what feels like an eternity; Katara shifts and pulls her hair out of the knot to let it dry.

"Listen, I don't like this idea any more than you do," she tips her head back in a way that Zuko can only think belongs to a royal, someone entitled and confident, and yet Katara retains none of the sharpness he recognizes from his experiences, "but I suppose, until Aang comes along, we have to, uh—"

"Bullshit?" Zuko blurts out, and something like a smirk (or is it a real, genuine smile?) tears across her soft lips, and he thinks he even sees her shoulders twitch to repress a laugh.

…

"I just freeze a walkway," she says, a devious look pinned onto her features, looking at him with a slightly sadistic amusement.

"But _how_?" Zuko's hands crumple in front of him in confusion as he stares at her, "It's all ice, what's to say you won't just slide off of it and fall off the side of the temple?"

Katara traps her bottom lip between her teeth, thinks about it for a moment before she lowers her gaze (and maybe something sultry bites back at him within those blue eyes, but it's all imagination, at this point, and Zuko is more pleased that they can converse, even trivially). "You'd like that," she says tauntingly, and she reaches her fingers out to walk across his knee, freezing a pathway, "wouldn't you?"

He splutters, swatting her away, and he waits until she snatches her dark hands away before he melts the ice. "I just don't understand how airbenders—how does _Aang_ solve anything like this?"

"I really appreciate Aang, you know," and Zuko wonders what word tripped up her tongue, how deep her appreciation is, "but _this_ has to be the most terrible idea he's come up with, and there have been _plenty_ of terrible ones."

…

It passes so quickly that—

"Are you talking about me?"

He floats over the cliffside so rapidly that both Zuko and Katara scramble away, stirring up dirt underneath their hands as he whirls into place, and Katara's shoulders shrink up with nervousness, her laugh is a flighty, unbelievable thing. It's so obvious to him that they have such a drastic effect on the other, because Katara becomes wobbly around her knees and Aang becomes soft in his skull, and Zuko just _stares_ at them.

It's so easy to forget that they're all children.

And yet, when she says, "Of course not, Aang," there is a gentleness to her voice that melts Aang into nothing but a childish smile and globe of air between his palms, and it's almost like they haven't spent the last five minutes talking about the Avatar at all. But Katara retreats behind Aang, curls starting to fray and frizz with the heat, and she looks over her shoulder to toss him a look.

He doesn't miss it; he smiles at her, and it disarms her.


	4. —of learning how memories are made

**a dragon's mind is not a thing to play with**  
of learning how memories are made  
…

"Tell me something," her voice is surprisingly soft as it drifts down around him, and she, herself, is settling down in her spot across from him, "about when you were young."

And maybe he should mask his shock as to not appear rude, but his eyes widen and his lips part curiously. Zuko looks up at her and she's, fuck, she's _smiling_. He's never seen her this way, not with an effortless smile on her lips like a secret, like her subconscious tugs at the corner of her mouth, and he can't help but stare for a few moments.

Then it quirks, her lips, and she's frowning in confusion. "That's important, isn't it? Why're you looking at me that way?" Zuko sucks in a nervous breath (because he wants to ask, _what way, I'm not looking at you_ any _way, Katara_ ), but the threat of her name in his thoughts is too close and he swallows too quickly, and bursts into violent coughs. He braces his palm against his chest, his other hand clenching dirt underneath his nails, and after a few moments of heavy breathing, his gaze floats back up to her.

Worry and amusement line the tilt of her lips as she speaks. "Are you okay now?" Zuko lifts his shoulders into a shrug and rubs the dirt of his palms onto the leg of his pants, sighing gently.

"I startled myself, I guess," he offers in poor explanation, and her eyebrow notches up before it drops again, either appeased with his meager explanation or nonplussed enough to ask any further question. He coughs again, this time to clear his throat, and his father's voice looms in the back of his head— _you are a_ prince _, carry yourself like one, and most importantly, you are my son_ —and he blinks the fire out of his eyes, drawing his posture up with square shoulders and neatly folded hands.

"My childhood wasn't like yours," he starts, and ignores the flare of his nerves when her face darkens, "it wasn't very pleasant. So, I don't think you really want to hear about it, and the last thing I need is for you to feel _sorry_ for me." Part of him doesn't mind the idea, but something shreds in brittle pieces inside of him at the thought of cheapened, pitiful sorrow in the stead of forgiveness.

Not after all of this _talking_. He could handle the shambles of whatever unsteady thing they had now—Katara didn't seem to hate him all hours of the day, but he was nowhere close to the circle of her good graces, and he may as well have been stumbling blindingly in the dark in the meantime.

Katara doesn't say anything, although the tremble of her lips tells him that she wants to. She wants to respond to this self-hatred he has ingrained, but Zuko isn't sure she would be much of a combatant for that, all things considered. She speaks, and his eyes flicker up to watch the expressions dance over her face. "Every year, on the day of first snow, my mother would wake us up, like a holiday."

Softly, a smile curves on her face and Zuko is mesmerized, watching her peaceably, "Sokka and I would play in the snowfall and our father would walk all the way through the fresh snow until we couldn't see him anymore. And it was like a game, we screamed, and he came back running." He watches her shift, unfolding her legs to pull her knees against her chest.

Zuko tries to imagine it; round, brown face tucked into a parka, toddling through the snow after her brother, hopping in and out of the large footprints of her father. And somehow, it shifts, to a frightened little girl screaming for her father, and him running back to her in vain. He flinches, and Katara looks at him curiously.

"Once," he finds himself saying, "my mother taught me how to manipulate clay casts. Not that I really _learned_ anything, since I was three, but I remember her melting the clay in bowls over candles, and pouring it into a dish. She made me put my hand in it, and it was hot and sticky and like sludge over my fingers. She told me to wash it off while she finished the cast, but instead I went to tell my father what I did."

His words sit in the back of his throat, heavy and painful, and his chest aches with each breath, but there is so much of a startling difference—at least Katara has the father who comes back running, the one who lets her follow in his footsteps with no burdens. "The clay hardened and I broke my thumb, because my mother asked me what happened," but Zuko remembers the frustration in his father's expression, the way he'd jerked him closer and gripped his tiny hand in his much larger one and peeled the sticky clay off with disdain, rough motions and a sharp turn of his head when Zuko cried out in pain, and it was weeks proved worthless because he couldn't bend with a broken finger, "but that's it. Azula was born after that, and there's not much to really remember worth remembering."

If Katara wants to say something, she does a spectacular job of _not_ saying it. But Zuko doesn't miss the way her eyes seem so bottomless with sorrow, the way she lets her chin sit between the points of her knees to hide the frown on her lips. Silence settles between them for moments at a time, and she watches him. There's something about her eyes that seem so natural, so that Zuko doesn't feel like he's being picked apart by her gaze, and when her eyes stretch in shock, it's because he realizes too late that he's mouthing words to himself.

"Sorry," his cheeks rise in color, pink and embarrassed, "I just…I'm a lot different now than I was when I was young. I never had anything easy, I worked so hard, _too_ hard—I'm just grateful that this is who I am now." And there are certainly parts of himself he could bear to release, like his irascible temper and internally damaging mindset and the wells of effort he had to put into everything. But his life carved at him, painfully, until he became this person sitting in the dirt.

He likes it, he thinks.

"Me too, you know." Katara stands and he stares at her as she moves, stares because those little syllables liken them to each other. And instead, Zuko imagines a girl trying and failing at keeping water cohesive, fighting against herself to be better, fighting against _the Avatar_ to be better, and as Aang appears over the side of the temple and Katara rises to meet him, he thinks he understands why he hurt her so badly.

He wishes he could take it all back, but he knows better than anyone that it is a challenge he must overcome. So Zuko watches Katara wrap her arms around Aang, watches the color in her face when the young Airbender tilts his head up and his nose brushes underneath her chin, and resolves himself to change.


	5. —of learning the truth

**now you see me, now you don't**  
of learning the truth  
…

They have much more important things to do than these mediations, but no matter how many times Katara asks Aang, he gives her the same answer: a gentle shake of his head with a tiny frown and wide, clear eyes focused on her. "You're already doing so well!" He tells her with an excited smile and she tries to mirror it, but it comes out crooked and dejected and far from genuine.

It doesn't matter, because he cannot confess anything to her that will erase the hurt he caused her underneath those catacombs, a pain she thought had died on the dank, dripping floor of the underground lake. So she can listen to Zuko as much as she wants, and maybe, _sometimes_ , she smiles, but underneath it she remembers the cool touch of his skin and the points of his scar and when she sees him, she remembers how it felt and remembers how _she_ felt, knitting Aang's shredded skin together.

Katara finds herself even more angry to find that no matter what she does to him during the day, no matter how she berates and harasses him, he is always seated by the time she scales the cliffside, on the side he sat on the very first day they started having mediations, hands cupped neatly in his lap. Her hatred is so misguided and blind sometimes that all she does is store his words away for later moments, tries to steel herself against his personal confessions.

She sees him turn his head and a shy, small smile flits across his lips, and it's terrible, because Katara just wants to make it go away.

"What will you do if you and Aang go looking for this Sun Warrior place and you still can't firebend?" Her words are brittle and harsh, but Zuko doesn't react. Whatever she hopes to draw out of him, she knows it will only be a violent outburst, and part of Katara is itching for a fight, itching to freeze his hands and chip at them until they shatter into pieces.

Zuko bites his lip nervously, and Katara finally sits down in front of him, knees digging into the ground and heels digging into her backside. "This is serious, Zuko," she insists, brows drawing together in frustration, "if you can't teach Aang firebending, then there will really be no use for you, here, and—"

"I'll find a way to help."

His face darkens, shadows of angry red in his cheeks, and Katara wants to laugh at the sight. Something deep underneath all of this virulent pettiness calls out to her, trying to coax her into sympathy and friendliness, but she can't bring herself to go along with that today. "Not that your firebending was particularly impressive to begin with."

He knows, because his eyes widen and then his face falls into impassivity, and she knows that he is prepared to bear the brunt of her bitterness, of her petulant tactics to anger him. He folds his arms across his chest and Katara tucks her legs underneath her, sitting with her legs crossed. She flicks her hair over her shoulder, and one corner of her mouth lifts in a smirk.

"The only firebender I've ever seen with a scar," she scoffs, but Zuko jerks suddenly, arms twitching across his chest, head snapping up to look at her, "what'd you do?"

Even parts disgust and even parts anger spill over his face, mixing until he just barely keeps his rage tempered. Katara's fingers rest on the tip of her waterskin, ready to rip all of the liquid out of it and drown him on dry land, but it is he who leaves her drowning when he lunges over the small peak in the ground, topples her onto her back.

Katara twists and starts to move, but Zuko presses the heel of his hand over her face, over her _eye_ , and she squirms under his grip but he holds her still. " _This_ is what my _father_ did," he hisses, his voice dangerously low, and Katara hears his words in abrupt stereo, ringing in her ears even when he stops talking, " _this_ was my _punishment_ for wanting to _save_ people."

One of them was breathing heavily—Katara couldn't discern which of them it was because her heart was beating in her throat and his eyes pierced hers, concentrated rays of sunlight. She didn't dare move, not at the risk of him burning her to ash with only the force of his own will to hold him back.

"So shut up," he snarls, jostling her, their foreheads bumping together awkwardly, "you don't know _anything_ about how hard I've worked, you don't know what I've done to _deserve_ anything, _so shut_ _up_."

Katara yanks at her hands but he's the one who lets go, pulling himself off of her and getting to his feet. "I'm done," he says quietly, his body still quaking angrily, "you can tell Aang that I'm _done_."

Her face aches slightly and it's because she remembers the feeling of his rough palm pressed against her eye, resting on the cup of her cheek, and something burns with shame low in her stomach at the fact that she chased him away. Katara expects to feel something borderline triumphant, because he wasn't strong enough to withstand all of the pressure she thought he deserved and finally, _finally_ she proved it.

But Katara only feels like a villain as she sits up, shaking the dust out of her hair and then pulling it over her shoulder and then through her hands like a sieve, carefully picking out any of the lingering dirt. She just wants to sit here and pretend it hadn't happened, but every time she closes her eyes, she recreates the anger and the hurt in the lines of his face, hears his voice stuttering over his explanation.

 _This is what my_ father _did_. Katara bites down on the inside of her cheek, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She tries to picture it, tries to imagine the Fire Lord touching his hand to his son's face, thirteen and vulnerable, and burning it. No, she didn't truly know anything about what Zuko had done to deserve anything, and for the first time since she'd met him, she felt terrible for treating him the way she had.

When Katara storms through the center of their camp, Aang and Zuko are huddled together, and she stops for a moment. Zuko's eyes are hollow and he doesn't turn to look at her, but Aang frowns at the look on her face, moves to comfort her. "Katara, what's wrong?"

She drags her arm over her face, startles herself because she hadn't even know she started crying, and then marches away; at least until the two of them return, she can be alone for a little while.


	6. —of learning the hard way

**evil runnin' through our brains**  
of learning the hard way  
…

The sun is nearly done setting when Aang finds her sitting on the ridge of their mediation spot. Katara will _never_ admit that she was wrong because there is still a wide-eyed child with bitter bones housed inside of her, a little girl who cries out for her mother and is met with sterile silence. It is a shame because that little girl cannot forgive because she does not understand, and the part of her with the power to overcome this has wedged a shard of hatred into the throat of the very person with the power to bring her to peace.

She is grateful when Aang settles down beside her silently. His eyes cling to the shape of her face in profile, the ratty tumble of her hair underneath the still glowing sun, the passive look in her eyes.

He coughs, and she tilts her head towards him. "We were able to reconnect with some of the more original firebending forms. Training will, um, be back to regular from now on."

Katara manages a weak smile and nod. "That's great, Aang."

The silence between them is painful, a prickly wave that sloshes between the two of them until they have no choice but to speak up and dispel the tension.

"Zuko wouldn't tell me what happened—"

"I'm _not_ apologizing to him, Aang."

Her tone is dissonant and loud above the peaceable lilt of Aang's still childish voice and part of her burns with shame when he turns those naïve, cloudy eyes to her face, lined with the admiration and affection that is always dripping from his features. He is still so young, so impressionable, and the only child she will ever know to sleep through the hardships of _living_ with such a pain of loss ingrained in their blood.

"You asked me to do this mediation and I agreed to do it for you. And maybe there were some times where I thought I could—I thought I _might_ be able to—" She can't bring herself to speak anymore, because she knows better. She knows she was becoming comfortable, was learning, was watching Zuko unfurl from the enigmatic rival he'd once been in her life to someone human, someone who felt.

She thought she might be able to _relate_ to him, and something inside of her told her that if she did, her pain would be neutralized by her forgiveness. (And though it hurt, it was her entitlement to pain, because the moment she stopped feeling that pain, it would be the moment she stopped fighting so passionately.)

"I can't do it anymore. And neither can he, and, Aang, you can't just _force_ people to understand one another." Her eyes darken as she turns away from him, voice falling into a quiet whisper. "I could _never_ understand him."

Her words seem to floor Aang because he is silent, but it doesn't afford him much time; something rustles from the edge of the cliffside, and Zuko leaps over the edge and falls down into a careful crouch to keep his balance.

Katara notices the way his eyes immediately avert from hers.

"I need to talk to you, Aang." There is some sort of reverence in his voice, but Katara doesn't _care_.

"I'm talking to him." She snaps, folding her arms across her chest.

As much as he may want to turn and look at her, he doesn't. His eyes, echoing the slice of sun still hanging in the sky, are fixed on Aang as if something vital hangs in the balance.

"You two need to talk more than anything," Aang says quietly, sadly. She hates the sadness because it is the only thing that tugs on her guilt more than the press of Zuko's strong hand against the curve of her cheekbone, threatening to crush her to dust.

"I have _nothing_ to say to her."

That word pierces through her chest, sharp and jagged and painful. She is _nothing_ , now, when she was afforded a wealth of patience and nervous glances and awkward blushes. She is nothing, but what wounds Katara the most is that the way he says _nothing_ means that she once held the potential to be _something_.

"You think I want to talk to you after what you did?" Katara is on her feet before she can stop herself, but she immediately notices Aang's presence in front of her, keeping her away, _truly_ mediating.

He barks out a laugh and Katara's blood turns over cold. "You have no right to be angry with me. This is what you _wanted_ , Katara," he pronounces her name so elegantly that it is nothing more than a beautiful insult, "you _wanted_ me to become that person you hate, _again_."

Aang's hands close around her wrists and it isn't until something cool trails down the sides of her legs that she realizes there was water lining the edges of her fingers, circling a furious rainstorm in the palm of her hand. His eyes are pleading, but something bubbles up in Katara, the urge to shove Aang away and freeze all of the blood around Zuko's heart until it bursts.

"You _are_ that person! You'll _always_ be that person! And I—" Maybe it is anger that brings her to tears, or frustration, or genuine pain, but she is too upset to know the true source. "I can't forgive you! I won't!"

Her eyes ache almost immediately with the force of holding back her tears, and Aang's hands feel so light against her wrists, and she feels more alone in that moment the sun sets on Zuko's glittering, starlight eyes.

"I'm not here for _you_ ," he says hotly, and Katara feels the first tear fall. She tries to scrub it away but Aang's grip on her wrists is not faint anymore, but a restraint to hold her in, a tether to hold her together. "I'm not going to beg for your forgiveness, Waterbender. If you hate me that much, if you can't find it within you to forgive me…"

She watches him, the cautious steps he takes away from her and Aang, towards the edge of the cliffside. She watches the clench of his teeth and the hard set of his jaw and the way his fingers curl into the heel of that hand and the phantom burn it left on her skin.

"…then I don't need you to."

Katara doesn't so much see him drop down from the edge of the cliff, back the way he came, as much as she feels the absence of tension. Aang's hand falls from around her wrist and he flicks open his palm to rest a flame in the center, and Katara can see the film of tears gleaming in her eyes.

Her tears fall quietly as she tries to blink them away, inhaling the silence and the heavy inference of Zuko's words, and when she exhales, Aang's arms are wrapped around her waist in comfort.


	7. —of learning about loss

**freedom and high fidelity**  
of learning about loss  
…

He is a lot smarter than any of them will give him credit for.

Granted, Zuko is a lot of things that none of the Avatar's friends have come to understand quite yet, and though there are some things he is willing to grant leniency with, there are other things ( _the only firebender I've ever seen with a_ scar) that he cannot, and that he will not pardon.

So, when Sokka slips down the side of Appa's saddle in surprise, he is willing to let the implications sink in. He is more attentive to the group than they seem to think he is, and knowing well enough to lie in wait for Sokka to emerge in the middle of the night is a testament to that fact. If there is anything that he wants to say, he keeps it bottled carefully to himself.

"Let me help you," Zuko says with a rasp, tilts his head in the opposite direction, and though he can sense the apprehension in the contours of Sokka's face, the other boy follows him without hesitation.

He is silent in those fractions of seconds, staring at Zuko with eyes that look too much like Katara's, except softer and darker and so much more experienced. "Why? Why do you want to help me?"

It's something Zuko has to think about as he leads Sokka down towards the space he'd landed his airship, ignoring the points of rocks into the soft bottoms of his boots. By the time they arrive, he's not sure he has an answer for him. Zuko isn't sure there is an answer.

Those are the moments Zuko remembers when they return to the Western Air Temple. He is exhausted, but he is smiling because Sokka is smiling because his family is _complete_. Maybe it is not truly complete, perhaps fragmented but still reliable, and jealousy bites at the back of his throat for the occasion. He should be happy for them, but there is a shadow of something selfish and malevolent that threatens to bleed darkness into the white light of his emotions.

Zuko slips into the temple wordlessly, trying to blink the image of Katara and Sokka embracing their father from behind the color splashes on his eyelids. And he should be paying better attention, because he nearly flinches at the sound of a voice directly in front of him.

"Hey," and the nervous laugh completely gives the young Avatar away, "careful there, Sifu Ho—"

"Aang," he interjects wearily, completely unaware of how close he'd come to colliding with him, "what are you doing?"

He watches the sheepish blush crawl across his features, and he knots his fingers together, locks them down against his legs. "I was—do you mind training with me some more, Sifu? Because…I don't think I've got it quite right." There is something fidgety in Aang's posture, and it throws Zuko for a loop, drives him mad trying to decipher it.

But in the end, he acquiesces. "Sure," he flexes his hands, listening to the crack of his knuckles, and watches the way Aang's face lights up. Still, there is something sad underlined in his expression, but Zuko doesn't press; he is still far too fragile from being pressed himself, still too worn from his own experiences.

Aang leads them into an open space within the temple, with a high-domed ceiling and dead leaves gathered in the corners. It still impresses Zuko on an otherworldly level, to imagine a civilization living in the clouds and freefalling from the sides of cliffs like it was just a part of their daily routine.

He smiles, though Zuko knows within minutes he will be whining under the heat, under the stress, and he can't help but return it with a tight-lipped smile.

Zuko focuses on the sound of the flames cutting through the air as they cycle through their routine warm-ups. Aang is still new, but he follows them with a slight delay, tries to remember which way to turn his arms and how to stagger his feet apart and when to keep his muscles tight.

But the second and third and fourth time around, he is in sync with Zuko, swaying back and forth with sweat falling into the crease of his neck, and Zuko smiles at the transformation, at the gentle hum he feels now when fire is coursing through him.

It no longer destroys him inside out, it no longer frays him.

"I'm happy," Aang says suddenly, and his leg pauses in the middle of a kick, fire trailing behind his heels before he drops back down into their starting pose, "but there's something else, you know."

Zuko blinks, his brows furrowed and eyes focused on Aang. "Do tell," he says, collapses down into a cross-legged position before he strips off the outer layer of his robe, wiping his face in the back of it.

"Everyone I knew here is gone," he says factually, like his name, like the air he coils around his fingers so effortlessly, "my family and my friends and I can't go anywhere to find them, not like Katara and Sokka and _you_ can."

There's no word for the way his heart flares with emotion, because even though everything waiting for him is still rife with pain, it is still _there_. Aang is alone, except for the rest of these jaded wartime children, and it is the first time since he saw the rush of power from Aang's glowing eyes that he realizes.

Aang is still a child with feelings, a child who restrains the great sea of sadness within him. It makes Zuko feel small, infinitesimally small in comparison to the things that break him down.

"How do you do that?" Zuko's smile is wry, half hidden in the scarlet fabric he twists around his hands. "My father…I used to long for his affection, until he— _scarred_ me—and then I didn't know what I really wanted. I thought I wanted to return home but somewhere on my way back home, there was something else I wanted, too. How do you make me feel like there is even anything in my life worth having?"

His eyes go big, but Aang smiles too, wide and genuine. "Because life is worth having," he nods, "that's what I was always taught. And you're strong, Sifu Hotman. Even stronger than me, to have a valuable life with both happiness and pain. That's what makes it such a good life."

It seems almost prophetic to hear Aang's words, but he can't help but tip his head up towards him and stare, like he still isn't used to the way he can be, a child one moment and a spiritual beacon the next. And Aang only smiles that goofy smile of his, like he's just made a terrible joke, and falls down to sit beside Zuko.

Life is funny this way, being side by side with the mythical Avatar that he'd never thought he would stumble across. He can't help but marvel over Aang for a moment, because simply by being there, he transcends everything. Maybe, one day, Zuko will thank him for rescuing him from a life of floating away at sea.

"Still," he says, piercing through Zuko's stray thoughts, "I'm happy for Sokka. Katara, too."

The topic lingers in the air between them, and Zuko can feel the way Aang's eyes bore into the side of his face, but he doesn't say anything. Aang seems to pick up on the hint fairly quick.

"Ready for another round?" he asks, sifts his fingers through the dark fringe of his hair, allows himself to smirk playfully towards Aang. Air sweeps up underneath the two of them, but it carries Aang to his feet gracefully, Zuko standing soon after him.

He can feel the fire brimming on his knuckles as he takes his place beside Aang, but there's a heavy _bang_ and then angry footsteps headed in their direction. Zuko braces himself for something, for _anything_ , and he's right to.

Katara appears before them like a sunken whirlwind, her eyes deep and clearly marked with tears, her face drawn together in one line of frustration. Zuko turns his gaze to Aang, but that is his mistake, because when he turns, he can feel the chill of her skin pressed against his chest, a fist against his heart.

He blinks, and she is standing face-to-face with him, glaring up into his surprised eyes.

"Aang," she says, though she looks into his eyes, and something within him hardens, "we're having a mediation. Right now."


	8. —of learning the crooked path

**living right and you can say i'm dead wrong**  
of learning the crooked path  
…

Zuko wants to look away from her, an angry ocean in her gaze, but for some reason, he finds he cannot turn. From the corner of his eye, he can see Aang fidgeting again, but he takes a step back as if to concede to her demands.

He can hear her teeth slide over other another, and the fist tangled within his shirt releases its hold. All he can think about is how far away they are from their usual mediation, how far away his mind has been from those topics in the last few days. Zuko hasn't stopped to think about it, to think about going into the week before Sozin's Comet alongside this hateful girl.

Katara hasn't changed, but there is something so dark around her now, something that Zuko doesn't remember ever noticing before. She sits down on the ground opposite him, and he finds himself sinking into the dirt across from her.

"I'm supposed to share important things about myself, right?" A rhetorical question, because Katara doesn't even pause for an answer. "The most important thing to me is my _family_. And for some reason, some reason beyond the scope of my _wild_ imagination, _you_ helped my brother bring _my father_ back here. So, help me, if you're planning some sort of scheme, Zuko? I will make sure you _pay_ for it."

It doesn't surprise him, really, at all. Katara's anger is glowing in her eyes, and it is all his strength not to laugh at the insinuations she makes towards him. But on the other hand, he isn't quite sure what to say to her now that she has gotten it off of her chest, because the way Aang stares at him, he knows that he is supposed to say _something_.

 _Why? Why do you want to help me?_ Sokka had asked him that question before they'd left on their great expedition, and when he had posed it, the answer had been erased from Zuko's mind. _He just wanted to help_ , is the only thing that he could tell himself. But looking at the way they'd embraced, acknowledging the way it made him feel, that had given him enough of an answer to give back to Katara.

"I know what it's like," Zuko says quietly, tapping his fingers together, "knowing he's out there and that anything could be happening to him. I had a way to help, so I did, and I'm glad. I have no intentions of bringing any harm to your family, you know. I…I don't have any intentions of bringing any harm to anyone, if I can help it."

He doesn't meet her eyes because he _knows_ she is watching him, can't be lured into deciphering the meaning of her gaze because there is such a long way to forgiveness and understanding and Katara has just barely grazed the surface.

" _Can_ you help it?"

It stings, but Katara's voice is soft, tremoring with tears held tight in the corners of her eyes. And he wonders about it himself, whether or not it can be helped. Sometimes, he thinks, there are just some things that are too close to the fire.

"Of course he can." Aang's voice is strong, stronger than the doubt in the back of Zuko's mind. It reminds him of the warmth of his fire after refining his technique in the ancient temple, the fire that surges within him radiating from a source of peace. "Zuko is the one who taught me how."

For a moment the two of them overlap, confusion a low-hanging cloud between Zuko and Katara, but Aang simply smiles his knowing smile and continues to explain.

"Firebending is all about breath and control, and I was reckless with it. It's easy to be, but it's the one element that can cause so much reckless pain. I'm still kinda scared," Aang's eyes drag along the ground, flicker up to meet Zuko's hazy golden stare, "but there's power in firebending, the kind of power that teaches great care. And I have a great teacher."

Zuko doesn't smile, but there is something warm in the shadows of his eyes, a tightness in his chest that threatens to burst full of warmth. Katara is still silent, speechless across from them, and Aang's smile is enough to sit between the three of them. But he doesn't linger; the wind sweeps him off of the ground and onto his feet, smiling between the two of them before leaving them alone, together.

He can't help the nervousness that wells in his chest; it has been days of faded out anger that comes in surges, so Zuko isn't quite sure how he feels towards her. There are still some moments where the look in her eyes reminds him of the way she tensed under the pressure of his hand cupped over her eye, some moments where the thought of her mockery paralyzes him and injects him full of fresh wrath.

But sitting opposite of her while her eyes are lost in the dark clouds of the sky, Zuko feels unnecessarily vulnerable, willing to curse Aang to hell and back for softening him with his words.

"I don't care anymore." Her voice is low, empty of every emotion he anticipates—malice or sorrow or discontent or ambivalence, and he finds that he likes it even less than her anger, likes it even less that she feels nothing at all.

"Your father," Zuko starts, but he's surprised to hear the breath that she draws, long suffering and heavy in her throat.

"My father," she echoes with exhaustion, "has been fighting my entire life. And it was worse when…when the Fire Nation took my mother away, because there was nothing to distract us from it. He's fought so much, and I don't know if I'll even live to see him stop."

It bubbles in the back of his mouth, the privilege of wartime and loss that wound its way closer until dismantling his family from the inside out. But Zuko can't bring himself to sympathize with her, partially because there is a part of him that tempts the risk of being burned by the fire that forged him.

"I'm sorry."

"You're not." Her smile is pained, stretched for every moment she holds it in place, counterfeit. "You lost your mother too, didn't you? And the rest of your family is tyrannical, and you're so _hurt_ , you have no room left. You can't be any more sorry for me than you are for yourself."

Zuko feels his skin ripple under the tone of her voice, piteous and mocking and tinted with a rosy melancholy that seems to keep her eyes from meeting his. Katara's fingers dig trenches in the dirt and he watches the mud cake under her nails, rolls her words over in his head.

A deep breath, and then, "I had years to be angry at the world, Katara. About my mother and about my family and about my—my scar. I was angry when you met me. But now," Zuko untucks himself from in front of her, shakes the dirt from his clothes, "it's your turn to be angry, and my turn to trust you."

It seems against his better judgment, but Zuko holds his hand out towards her. His offer isn't as much of an olive branch as it is full of thorns, and he knows there are still light years of distance between them ever being companions.

But this once, when she clasps his hand with a dark look in her eyes, he thinks something may be changing.


	9. —of learning to commiserate

**no one has ever been this lost**  
of learning to commiserate  
…

"I'm going with you."

"What?" Katara's fingers lock around her waterskin, eyes stretched with shock. It only lasts for a few moments before it flutters away, her expression silent and unpliable. "Sokka," a heavy sigh, "this isn't about you. And I can take care of myself."

She can count on one hand what she expects from Sokka. She loves him to death, honestly and truly, but in this moment, she does not need his overarching presence when she is consumed by this much anger and darkness. Messily, she scrapes the rest of her belongings off of the ground, tossing them into her bag without so much as a glance.

Katara can feel the breath rush out of her lungs when Sokka grabs her by her shoulders, turns her around to look at him. It's the first time she's really seen him like this, with his eyebrows knit together harshly and his eyes dark and deep. For a moment, she doesn't recognize her own brother, only sees the troubles of an older brother weighing heavily in his gaze.

"Anything that's about you is about me," he says matter-of-factly, "and this is about our mother, which means it's _damn sure_ about me, too."

She would suspect that Sokka was angry at her, except she _knew_ better, and she knew that Sokka was just angry at the way she was behaving. And, well, perhaps Katara was a little out of line. It was hard for her to distinguish where she was, whether she was toeing the line or stomping over the boundaries completely. Between Zuko and Aang and now her brother, she wasn't sure where she ended and her anger began.

"Sokka…"

"It's okay," he cups his hand around the back of her head, pulls her until her forehead touches his shoulder. Katara remembers being five years old and crying herself awake in the middle of the tundra. She remembers Sokka rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and climbing over towards her, holding her this very same way. It means _your thoughts are in my heart_ , with her head against his ribcage; it means _I hope I am always on your mind_ , with his chin on her head. "You're going to be okay, Katara. But I'm going with you."

Katara buries her head against his chest, curls her arms around his waist feebly. As much as she clashes with Sokka on a multitude of different levels, he understands her on a fundamental scale that has been rebuilt with the more malevolent elements to her being. He may not discover what makes her tick at every turn, but he knows what to say, knows how to protect her, knows how to help her help herself.

"Let's go," she says, and he only offers her a grim smile.

...

In the end, it's Sokka and Zuko who pack their things onto Appa's back while Katara talks with Aang. It shouldn't make her as nervous as she is, and she wraps her fingers around her wrist just to try and calm her pulse.

"You think this is a good idea, Katara?" Aang's eyes are wide and hurt, she finds with a modicum of surprise.

"Sokka and Zuko will be with me, though. I'll be fine."

Aang is the one who frowns, as if there is some unknown element only he is aware of in this situation. She tries her best not to fidget, though. Katara has thought about this brimming with anger, she has thought about it bordering on tears. But she approaches Aang with a clear head and a desperate heart, and there is something that greatly weighs on having his understanding.

"What will you do…when you find him?" His voice is quiet, so soft that she barely hears the quiver in his words, the inevitable belief that she will find this man so evident in his words.

Her voice is gentle in its answer. "Honestly? I don't know, Aang. I just felt so incredibly angry when I told Zuko about my mother, and the only thing that made it go away was hearing that the man who killed her was out there, and that I could find him."

"Katara…"

"I don't know what I'll do if we find him," her fingers curl around his shoulder, her gaze insistent, "but I can't do nothing about it. I'm not asking you to encourage me or even support me, because…I know better than that."

She blinks carefully, realizing how close they are, realizing that her hand is still lingering on his shoulder. Her cheeks redden, but she does nothing to remedy the situation, does nothing to change the air of their conversation.

"Please," she says softly, so that Aang leans in to listen, "please try to understand."

Katara doesn't think he will ever be able to understand it, but she hugs him tightly before they go.


	10. —of learning the true motives

**haven't looked me in the eye once**  
of learning the true motives  
…

Katara doesn't quite know how to feel. By nightfall, she takes Appa's reins with gentle hands in order to let her brother rest. Something in her chest swells, perhaps the apology she wants to offer to Sokka, but it's stuffed deep down beneath too many other emotions for her to grasp it the way she wants to. Still, she cringes at the thought— _this isn't about you_ —and promises herself that she will find a way to make it up to him. And Sokka behaves as if she hadn't reduced their mother to some totem to him, which is the part that bothers Katara the most.

Her fingers knot with pressure around the leather harness, and Appa offers a low, sympathetic rumble at her distress.

"…so, water captures fire."

"No," a soft sigh, "water captures earth, and earth captures fire."

"That makes _zero_ sense, logically!"

This time, she can hear her brother's voice clearly; the two of them have either given up on keeping their friendship a secret, or are the two worst whisperers she's ever known—and knowing Sokka, she can't put her finger on which is closer. But she hasn't missed anything between them: the shared smiles and Sokka's sudden interest in going on walks and Zuko walking around with his swords more than usual. She's not sure what to make of the two of them, but all she knows is she wants _no_ parts of Zuko, even if he's her brother's new best friend.

"It's just the cycle of bending, Sokka," Zuko tips his voice back into near-silence, and Katara refocuses her gaze on the night sky. Pulling Appa up into the clouds had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but she finds gliding with the bison below the clouds gives the most breathtaking view of the night sky. And anything for her to focus on other than the two boys playing board games at her back is a small relief for the mounting tension she feels.

She tries not to think about what could await her at the end of this trip, but the thoughts rise in her mind unbidden. Information seemed trivial at the time, especially because she refused to allow Zuko to divulge much to her in person, but she knew well enough from Sokka. She _knew_ if they were successful, there would be a face to pin to her shattered childhood.

She would finally be able to look in the eyes of the man who killed her mother.

For a split second, Katara's head swims with an uncontrolled rush of blood, and she sways to the side. Someone's hands are around her shoulders and her ears feel weighty with liquid, and she can see the sky completely, now. The stars twinkle overhead and she feels warm hands slide underneath her thighs, lift her away from the reins.

The world comes back into focus slowly. Someone breathes a sigh of relief.

Katara blinks and tips her head back until she can make out the line of her brother's jaw. "Why can't you ever just _rest_ when you're tired?" Her head is in Sokka's lap, his fingers resting at the curve of her collarbone. The rest of her is shrouded in blankets and she can see some of the tiles from their game spilling out from one of their bags.

"M'not tired," she offers, a long blink of her lashes before she peeks back at Sokka. His expression is the most serious she's seen on him in a long time; it gives her a gentle flashback to the day their father left, the way his brow curled as he watched Hakoda join the others who went off to war.

She turns onto one side, the tiles clattering when she pulls her knees towards her chest.

"Why're you so close to him?"

The question sounds innocent, only because Katara's exhaustion wilts the venom from her voice. Sokka's fingers brush at the curls near her temple, and he holds in a sigh that she can feel against his chest.

"He's not so bad," he offers passively, "he helped us bring Dad back."

"He _hurt_ us," is her petulant answer, slurred into the night air, "he almost killed Aang."

Sokka's rebuttal never comes. Instead, he rubs his fingers along the edge of her hairline, a motion meant to soothe her but Katara suspects it is for him. From where she lays, she can make out the outline of his figure against the night sky. In all black, if she squints, Zuko simply looks like an expanse of the midnight sky. Easier, she thinks, to pretend he's not there.

…

"We're not here yet," Zuko says to her the moment she sits up, from somewhere on the ground.

Katara blinks into the sunlight, stretches her hands above her head, and promptly ignores him. The sky is clear and from what she can distinguish from their surroundings, they've touched down at a farm on the outskirts of town. She takes care to tether herself to the saddle before she leans over to get a closer look. It seems to be remote, since Appa is easily the largest mass against the horizon for as far as Katara can see. The way his body shifts underneath her gives an indication that he's more than comfortable enough to graze, and the grass surrounding them gives him plenty to work with. A sturdy wooden fence encloses the property, and Sokka is standing beside Zuko as he talks to an older woman.

Her hand, thin and wrinkled, palms Zuko's scar with such a boldness that it makes Katara's cheeks burn—and her eye hurts (this _was my_ punishment _for trying to_ save _people_ ) with phantom ache—but the firebender doesn't as much as flinch. Curiosity flares and another memory rises to the surface of her mind before she can stop it; the green glow of the catacombs, her fingers spread along the base of his scar, a phial of healing water trembling between her clumsy fingers.

The anger rises, too.

Katara slices her fingers through her hair in a half-hearted attempt to make it decent before she climbs down from Appa's saddle, landing on the ground with a spring against the soft grass. Something must give her away because Sokka turns to look at her the moment she approaches them from across the field, his eyes already a deep indicator of his worry. He meets her halfway there, a hand reaching out to grasp her shoulder to steady her.

She dodges it artfully, firing off a question. "Where are we?"

Sokka's dedication to avoiding the awkward moments between the two of them is a next-level tier, because he moves his hand behind his head and shrugs nonchalantly. "Zuko found a safe place to keep Appa so we can go into town."

For a moment, Katara thinks Sokka will answer her next question before she can answer it, but she blurts it out anyway. "How do you know it's safe?"

"Well, it's a farm full of other animals. Not to mention that it's a shelter, so." Sokka's tongue hits the back of his teeth with a noise that she registers as annoyed. "It's sort of their job."

Her shoulders slump. "Sokka—"

"I'm starving," he cuts in with a half-shout, "and I think there was the promise of breakfast, so I'm going to grab our things." He floats past her to climb into the saddle and retrieve their belongings, and now Katara feels that avoidance as a warm shame in her cheeks.

…

"I'm going to learn how to play this game if it'll be the death of me," Sokka announces triumphantly.

A pause, then Katara hears something that she would call a laugh if it came from anyone else. "I'd rather not have your death on my hands."

The town that they've settled in is quiet and sleepy, in the haunted sort of way. She'd taken some time to walk the streets earlier, careful to be inconspicuous as she studied her surroundings. It didn't seem anything like how she pictured the Fire Nation to be; it was too civilian, not well enough marked by the destruction of war.

It seemed unfair.

On the floor of their room, Katara gets a better view of the game they had been talking about the night before. It's a round board bisected twice, dozens of pieces scattered on each side like inlaid gems. The tiles glimmer with vibrant colors and if she looks closer, she can see the markings of the elements on some of the tiles.

"So I can block," Sokka is kneeling over the board, his brows knit in concentration as he slips a blue piece beside Zuko's green piece, "here, like this?"

"Exactly." Zuko sifts some of his dark hair away from his face, and the edges of his scar are outlined against the lantern light in the room. Katara glances away from him, hones in on the lotus board.

It doesn't take long for Katara to gather the rules. Air captures water, and water captures earth, and earth captures fire. Fire captures air. She learns the two omniscient tiles—the Avatar and the white lotus—and the objective of the game that revolves around the white lotus tile.

So, when she suspects the two of them have crawled into their sleeping mats, Katara pries the board from its spot and gathers the small, black bag that contains all of the pieces, and drags it out of their room. Down the hallway, past the alcove, Katara sets the lotus board in the center of a table eclipsed by the moonlight through a window. The lobby of the inn is empty, and its doors are sealed shut for the night.

Katara sets the pieces in order and moves them on her own accord. It isn't exciting, but she finds herself righting the rules of the game as she missteps. She can't move the vermilion tile because it is blocked by the bright green tile. She loses her Avatar tile to the blue tile, and must start all over again.

The time passes without consequence for her as she sits at the table, and as she lifts her yellow tile to move it over into the next space, a voice cuts through the silence.

"Don't do that," the familiar rasp of his voice doesn't soothe her heart, beating rapidly in her own chest, "you'll put your lotus into check."

The darkness doesn't do Zuko any favors, but the moonlight does; his features are sharpened by the shadows, but softened by the incandescent light streaming through the windows. His eyes glow in pulses as they move around the room. Katara swallows down on her nerves and finds herself with no anger left in reserve. She is merely tired, again. A little skeptical, but not angry.

"It's called Pai Sho." He doesn't try to talk to her. Katara wonders if he will ever try, or whether she has shattered his bravery in conversation. Despite it all, she is grateful for the small acquiescence. "I imagine you can't be as terrible as your brother."

Katara watches him reset the pieces with a muscle-memory she recognizes; it's the way it feels when she bends, or when she fits herself into Sokka's arms for a hug, or when she used to tumble down the snow piles in the South Pole. Once they all fit back into place, he extends a hand to her. She notices the look on his face, a softened grimace and a curious glance, but the emotion behind it slips Katara's mind. She notices he is less hostile, now (and her shame returns for a fleeting moment, always being the person to hold onto things too tightly).

Zuko moves a tile on his side of the board, and Katara mirrors him.

And they play.


	11. —of learning about the past

**every week, i'd pray for amnesia**  
of learning about the past  
…

The sun drips its energy into Zuko the moment it begins to crest on the horizon, so he finds himself brimming with heat despite teetering on the brink of sleep deprivation. Katara had wandered back to their room sometime in the middle of their fourth round of Pai Sho, when Zuko had captured her Avatar tile and forced it back to the origin point otherwise, he’d attempt to engage in another round. The night had been full of silence, with the occasional whisper of checkmate or clarification of rules.

And him, pretending he hadn’t noticed her eyes on him, not even once.

He hopes the morning will be more kind to him.

Outside, the air is thick with moisture but the wind sifts through the trees, a cool reprieve from the already oppressive atmosphere. As much discomfort as he can sense of Katara and Sokka, finally being in the Fire Nation puts some internal part of Zuko at peace with himself. Loyalty to his homeland had blinded him to the horrors of war—then he had been exiled away from it and it remained out of his mind.

But Katara and Sokka are perfect examples of what the spoils of war could truly be worth; _he_ is a perfect example of the lengths to which his mighty nation would go in order to retain their power.

Zuko sighs, with an absent touch of his fingertips to the bottom of his scar. It feels so foreign to his sun-kissed hands, the hardened ridges down to the soft spaces in the valleys between. Three years seems so long, but he is still not used to the dulled sensation of his face at times, still not used to the disfiguration of his skin. Telling Katara about his scar had been a vulnerable moment for him, and she’d razed her way through the conversation with a recklessness that left Zuko feeling as if she’d taken something away from him, instead of him freeing some deep dark secret about himself.

“Should I leave you alone, His Royal Sulkiness?”

The scowl twists across Zuko’s lips and he pulls his hand back down to his side. Sokka is almost a welcome distraction now that the sun has peaked over the skyline, and he stretches his arms in such a way that Zuko thinks he may be trying to punch him in the face and get away with it.

Ducking, Zuko bites down into a harsher scowl to mask him grin, and fails. “It’s too early for me to beat you at anything, Sokka.”

“Man,” Sokka huffs, “you firebenders sure are cocky. Can’t a guy just tease his friends in peace?”

Sokka has been throwing that word around so often between the two of them— _friends_ —and Zuko has a hard time reacting to it. Being banished on the precipice of adolescence and spending the rest of his time away at sea with grown men had left him nearly incapable of socialization. But there was something so easy about talking to Sokka, whether it was about himself or weapons or girls or games.

Zuko likes being friends with Sokka, is the conclusion he comes to.

“Your sister found her way to bed?” He asks, the words more stilted than he intends. If Sokka notices, he doesn’t speak on it.

“Yeah. The moon makes it hard for her to sleep, so she stays up at nights. It’s just one of those Katara things,” he adds, as if this is some grand clarification to Zuko. He files this information away for the time being.

Something must be on his mind, or Zuko’s face must emote more than he thinks, because Sokka’s face suddenly crumples into a frown. The sight of it causes his stomach to lurch in paranoia, and before he can ask him what he’s done, Sokka’s hand is an inch away from his face.

No, an inch away from his scar.

“Does it hurt?”

Zuko would slap Sokka’s hand away if it hadn’t been preceded by the stern face and gentle question, so he simply shakes his head dumbly. “It’s been years,” he mumbles, and Sokka pulls his hand away, as if he’d thought about touching the crumpled skin, “it doesn’t really feel like anything, not anymore.”

He watches the line of Sokka’s brow fold in deep thought, and it’s almost as if the words are buffering behind his lips, because he opens his mouth to speak and nothing comes out. Zuko considers letting their conversation fall back into the usual banter, and his heart thanks him for it too soon.

“How?” Sokka is able to mouth and quickly look away shortly after.

“It was a punishment.” He feels his chest tighten; the word _punishment_ seems so slight, as if Zuko had simply misinterpreted some law and received a fair reprimand. He’d campaigned for the lives of Fire Nation citizens at the cost of his own freedom, and yet he still called it _punishment_. “I spoke out of turn.”

If Katara’s reaction to learning the general story behind his scar seemed drastic, the sharp inhale from Sokka is a deep contrast. His features, always stretched with some form of melodrama, have calmed into a somber expression, one that Zuko senses is foreign to his new friend. Still, it does nothing but turn his stomach over with unease. Pity is the last thing he wants from Sokka, especially now that he has finally stumbled onto the finer points of friendship.

Luckily, Sokka doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t look at him with sad eyes. Zuko swallows the knot of lies in his throat— _it’s okay, it’s been years, I don’t even_ think _about it anymore_ —and soaks himself in the relief he feels. It feels like one of those awkward moments that Sokka capitalizes on with unnecessary jokes or inappropriately timed offers for fun and games, but it is absent of that lighthearted ignorance.

Zuko is grateful.

The air feels a little less oppressive, now.

…

“That’s dangerous,” the softness in her voice startles him, “and you’re bleeding.” Zuko stumbles in place and Sokka’s sword falls into the grass between them, piercing the soil. Above them, the sun is glaring down onto them, and Zuko swipes the back of his hand across his forehead. His hair curls at the edges, sweat sticking the dark strands together. Narrowing her gaze, Katara steps towards the two of them, her hands spread out beside her hips.

Sokka tips his head back cavalierly, “We’re just sparring. Some of us prefer to practice in order to stay sharp.”

Katara clicks her tongue against her teeth in an admonishing mimicry of a scoff, but she approaches him with her hands extended. Zuko briefly registers the water in her palms before they touch his bare shoulders, and watches with wide eyes when her fingers come back tinged with blood and sweat. But it’s all he can observe before she turns him away from her to get a better look at the wound.

Zuko scowls. “When did you hit me?”

“Don’t blame me!” Sokka cries, affronted. “You let your guard down!”

This time, he can’t quite form his teeth around the laugh to stop it in his throat; it bubbles past his lips and sounds low in the air, a deep chuckle. Katara’s fingers are cool against his shoulder blade and his mind collects the words he can’t seem to pull together. _She’s healing it_ , he thinks at the sensation of her cool touch and the healing water pouring into his skin. For a split second, he imagines what it must feel like underneath her careful prowess before it’s sealed up. The thought fades away before he can put a name to the fire it makes him feel, and Zuko turns to her just as she steps away with her head down.

“Hey.” Something flashes in her eyes and it is because Zuko has clasped her wrist with such a swiftness that even he doesn’t realize it right away, with a pressure inside of her pulse line that feels too comfortable under his fingertips. He doesn’t acknowledge the familiar hold, though. Instead, he lets go of her with an apologetic smile. “Thank you.”

“I’m a healer,” she says instinctively, and it sounds more as if it is aimed to herself than to him, “it’s what I do. In any case, I came out here to see what our next move is.”

Right. He feels slightly humiliated by the idea that he and Sokka have been making light of the real reason they’re in the middle of the woods outside of an inn in a remote Fire Nation city in the first place. As if sparring and playing Pai Sho was just a vacation, and the three of them would return refreshed and relaxed.

Zuko clears his throat. “Most of the current roster of the Southern Raiders are stationed at Whaletail Island, but I have it on better intel that most of the senior members have retired and are living in the center of the village now. It’s just—“ The words catch and he can’t quite pull them out fast enough. Both of their eyes are set on his, and the fierceness in their gaze locks him down. It’s the only moment that it strikes him how much Sokka and Katara are similar, because they hurt in the same way that draws them towards anger.

“Just what?” Sokka presses on.

“There are at least a dozen men from the Southern Raiders troupe that visited the Southern Water Tribe.” This time, he meets Katara’s eyes, an ocean pressing at the edge of her lashes. “Will you recognize him, when you see him?”

…

Zuko fights with the idea that he might’ve been looking for her at midnight when he stumbles across her with his Pai Sho board, in the same spot as the previous night. Her hair is knotted in a curly bun, and her elbows are pressed into the table as she thinks between each move of the tile. When he sits down opposite her, she doesn’t give any indication of being aware that he is nearby.

Except, Katara resets all of the pieces to the place they belong, and simply waits. Waits for him to make the first move, waits for him to speak. A well of patience from the water-girl whom hates him.

It only takes three turns for Zuko to measure her improvement, and it is such a scalar force that reminds him of his own trendline, of his childhood. While the other kids played, Zuko spent his time doing advanced firebending drills and practicing with his weapons and studying his calligraphy. If he wasn’t going to be blessed enough to be the lucky one, he was going to forge his way with a new virtue of perseverance.

“It’s all I see,” Katara says in a low husk, and moves a glimmering red tile to the close end of Zuko’s playing field. “His face. His eyes, and the way he smelled like ash. Sometimes I don’t even remember what my mother looks like but I could find him with just the sound of his voice alone.”

He is silent. It is the right thing to do, so he tips a green tile against her red, and watches her lips twist into a thoughtful frown. Katara clips a blue tile into check against his Avatar tile, and continues to look at the predicament of her fire tile with a concentration that seems removed from their game.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know.” Zuko catches the bitter part of himself willing to utter _waterbender_ at her scornfully; he has long since buried the part of himself that is angry with Katara long enough to talk to her. And it feels much more like a knife, knowing that the source of her pride is also her greatest downfall. “Your mother wanted to protect you. You know, deep down, that there was no other choice if she had to choose between herself and you.”

Katara braces her hands on the edges of the table and digs her fingernails into the splintering wood. “I hate myself for it. I hate myself more than I hate _him_.”

Zuko slides his lotus towards the center of the board and contemplates a response before watching her set to work. “I know the feeling. But you can’t lose sight of the fact that someone loved you so much that they sacrificed their life for you. It’s not something that anyone is capable of doing lightly.”

“Is that what happened to your mother?” Her eyes are glowing, and it startles Zuko so quickly that he doesn’t even notice that she’s cornered his other Avatar tile and forced it back to its starting point. The moonlight makes her face softer than normal, and her words lay down all of the armor that she holds.

In the middle of the night, Katara looks vulnerable, and beautiful.

“In a way.” Zuko takes a shuddering breath, moves a tile innocently into an adjacent space. “She had to choose between my life and someone else’s life. I wasn’t even fully awake when she’d left, but I don’t know if I could recognize her if I ever saw her again. I don’t know if she could recognize _me_ if she ever saw me again.”

Neither of them speak afterwards. Katara’s movements are slower, filled with more grandeur with each turn passing. But Zuko doesn’t know what to make of this new confession between the two of them. His mind has a difficult time twisting this sad, beautiful girl away from the image of the scornful, mocking one who’d reduced his greatest fault down to a terrible firebending accident.

Zuko moves his lotus into the center of the board, and Katara loses.


End file.
